AI is Here: The Precocious Adolescence of Artificial Intelligence

 By Clint Archer - Posted at The Cripplegate:

AI is here. We knew it was coming, but it feels too soon. Like when your little boy’s voice breaks and you suddenly realize he needs deodorant and a shave. We all expected Artificial Intelligence to cross the fiction-fact barrier. Just as with submarines, video chatrooms, and talking watches, sci-fi has a way of infiltrating reality. Technology that was only yesterday confined to computer labs, and doubtlessly military compounds, is today available to the public.

Now, anyone can sign up for a free account with Open AI, and get artificial intelligence through ChatGPT on their phone.

What is ChatGPT, you ask? Let’s pose that question to ChatGPT:

“I am ChatGPT, a large language model developed by OpenAI. I have been trained on a vast corpus of text data to understand and generate human-like language. As a language model, my main function is to generate text in response to user input, whether it be to answer questions, provide information, or engage in conversation.”

If you haven’t seen it (the preferred pronoun, for now) in action, imagine a screen on your phone or laptop with a search bar, like Google, into which you can type your questions, instructions, or musings. It almost instantaneously spews out a few paragraphs engaging with what you said. You can then choose a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” button to help it evaluate the acceptability of the reply.

It feels a bit like when you say “Alexa, tell me a joke” or “Hey Siri, what’s the weather today?”

The unremarkable interface feels familiar, even humdrum. But that’s like Marty McFly scoffing at Doc’s Delorium. It’s not what we are already used to that’s impressive; it’s what’s under the hood. No, ChatGPT is not a time machine … I mean, yet, I guess. Watched Terminator lately?

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See also:

• Finders Keepers: Is it Plagiarism to Use Artificial Intelligence? | The Cripplegate